


The Heir of Merlin

by lytefoot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Powerful Harry Potter, Powerful Hermione Granger, Powerful Ron Weasley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2019-09-26 13:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lytefoot/pseuds/lytefoot
Summary: Ron is the Heir of Merlin. Harry and Hermione are unholy abominations, and he loves them very much.In which Ron gets a go at being the Chosen One, Harry very much doesn't want to be the next Dark Lord, and Hermione knows almost as much about magic as she thinks she does.Inspired bythis Tumblr postby ViviTheFolle.





	1. The Dark Lord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViviTheFolle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViviTheFolle/gifts).



> In which Harry loses his temper.

On the second night in Australia, Ron Weasley woke up suddenly and completely, sure in his heart that something, somewhere was deeply wrong. Not here; Hermione was still asleep, curled up against his side, her wild brown curls spread across the pillow. But something was wrong. There was something he had to do that he wasn’t doing.

When Hermione woke, hours later, he was pacing the width of the room, needing to be moving, to be doing something. The initial sense of wrongness had eased somewhat, but not the anxiety. She came over, caught his arm, looked up at him, worried. “How long have you been awake?”

Ron shrugged. “A while. I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep.” He couldn’t say _something feels wrong_ to Hermione. She would want him to get more specific, to explain what was wrong and why, to find a way to specify and quantify the feeling, and he couldn’t. Instead, “Since you’re awake, should we…” he trailed off at a tapping on the window, turned. There was an owl there, one of the international post ones, that took the mail from the portkey offices.

Hermione was the one that let it in, took the note off the leg, maybe hoping someone had found some lead on her parents for her, but she offered it to him as the owl stood, apparently waiting for a reply.

_Ron, you need to come home, right now._ It looked like maybe Ginny’s writing, except wobbly as if her hand had been shaking. _Something’s happened. I can’t explain in a letter, it wouldn’t sound right. We need you, Ron. Everyone’s all right. But we need you. Please come home. Love you. Gin._

Ron handed the letter to Hermione, definitely worried. “’Mione? How long would it take an owl to get to us from the Burrow?”

“That isn’t how the international post works,” Hermione began, and Ron waited patiently while she explained, even though he knew that. She looked as worried as he felt, having seen the note, and explaining helped her stay calm. “It comes most of the way by portkey, an owl would take weeks to fly all the way here. It would have had to leave the burrow by four local time to get the evening portkey, which would be our morning portkey, and get here now. So, maybe four hours ago?”

Ron nodded. So, very close to the time he had woken up, Ginny had been writing him a note with shaking hands. He came over, hugged Hermione tight. He didn’t want to let go of her, didn’t want to leave her alone, but, “Love. Can I… will you be all right without me, just for a day or two? I am so sorry.” The price of two more international portkeys was causing a rising panic in Ron’s stomach, but if Ginny needed him that badly, he _had_ to go home. He might have to borrow some money from Harry, if he couldn’t find any other way to pay for it. The thought of leaving Hermione alone made him feel sick. But the thought of leaving his family, especially of leaving Harry, had made him feel sick, too, however Harry especially reassured him that it would be all right. “I just…”

“I know.” She didn’t look happy, but she stood on her toes, pulled his face down, kissed his cheek. “I’m not going to make you choose between me and your family.”

“ _You’re_ my family, too, ‘Mione.” He glanced at the transfigured paper ring she was wearing again, embarrassed that it was all he’d had for her. “You’ll really be all right?”

“I’ll… I’ll do some reconnaissance, all right? I… won’t go talk to them… until you come back?” She glanced at the ring, too, covered it with her hand. “Promise me you’ll come back soon.”

Ron put an arm around her waist, held her, kissed her forehead. “I promise.”

* * *

Hopefully, one day soon, Ron would be able to Apparate without checking himself over with both hands to see if he’d left anything behind. Today was not that day; he patted himself down as he arrived at the international portkey office in Adelaide, more relieved than he really should have been when there was no trace of blood on his hands. The portkey was less upsetting, although it was incredibly disorienting to go from mid-morning to late evening. Then apparition again, to arrive outside the protections at the Burrow, and finally jogging up the walk. Ginny met him halfway, threw herself at him to catch him around the neck in a hard hug, held on to him for a moment, then pulled him aside into the lee of the broom shed. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What happened, Gin?” She was looking… pale but determined, mostly.

“I haven’t told mum,” she said, “mum doesn’t need to know, it would only upset her.” She took a deep breath. “Harry and I had a fight.”

Ron stood still. That was, he was sure, _not_ why Ginny had called him back from Australia. Was it? “That’s not it, is it?”

“Harry and I had a fight, and it was… it was scary. I lost my temper, and he lost his temper, and we were screaming, and then… it was like there wasn’t any air. The fire went out. _Something_ crashed, and then I was here. Um. Kind of _right_ here. And um. I. I’m not going back there.” She looked up at him, daring him to argue. “I couldn’t put that in a letter. But _I_ can’t go back there, but I don’t think it’s okay to leave Harry alone, either.”

It had now been on the order of seven or eight hours of a sense of something _wrong_. In England, it must be nearing midnight, though Ron felt like he had no idea what time it was, and he hated timezones with a passion. He sighed. “Mum doesn’t know I’m back?” he said. He wondered if there was a way he could avoid explaining this to his mother, who had enough on her mind, and would be frantic about Harry at the drop of a hat. Ginny nodded agreement, apparently thinking the same thing. “Harry’s at Grimmauld Place?”

“That’s where we were arguing,” Ginny said. “I think so?” It had been _years_ since he’d seen Ginny looking actually frightened. There must have been more to this than she was letting on.

“Hey, it’ll be okay, squirt.” He kissed the top of her head. “Can you… not tell mum I’m back, right now? I’ll go take care of Harry, and I will say hello, but I don’t know when, and I don’t want her to worry.”

One more apparition, then, if he wasn’t going inside to use the floo. The sense of _something wrong_ was much, much more intense on the front step of Grimmauld Place, where Ron had apparated with the ease of practice. It was enough that he didn’t pay any attention to the anxiety that came with apparition itself. The door was locked. Not locked—the knob simply refused to turn. He tried _alohamora_ anyway, before running through as many more sophisticated unlocking charms as he could remember. When none of those worked, either, he tried _finite inacntatum_ , and then, getting frustrated, tried it _harder_. That, at last, had an effect: the door banged open on its hinges, rimmed for a moment with a glimmer of gold sparkles.

Inside, it was inky dark and freezing cold. Ron cast a _lumos_ as he went inside, shook his wand vigorously and scowled at it when it flickered and threatened to go out. Despite the noise of the door banging open, Mrs. Black was silent in her frame, a smile playing at the corner of her twisted mouth. She looked at Ron with narrow eyes as he entered, hissed, “Ah, the blood traitor… soon, soon he’ll learn. Oh, yes.”

Lovely.

Where… Ron looked in the kitchen, first. The fire in the big hearth was completely out, and a lot of the crockery was smashed on the floor. This, presumably, was where Harry had fought with this sister. Harry wasn’t here any longer. Ron was not especially looking forward to searching all the nooks and crannies of Grimmauld Place, with only a _lumos_ to light his way, even if Bill had been through the place with a curse-breaker’s eye before Harry had moved back in. He wondered if this would work for _him_. He stood in the kitchen, drew a deep breath with effort—when had the atmosphere become so stifling? For that matter, when had it gotten so _cold_? “Kreacher?”

There was a soft pop, and Kreacher was beside him, looking as thoroughly wretched as Ron had ever seen him. His ears drooped, he was more stooped than ever before, and he looked legitimately happy to see Ron, which had certainly never happened before. The little elf was actually trembling. He plucked at the seam of Ron’s jeans. “M… master Weasley, sir. Oh, master Weasley.” He shot Ron a pleading look. “Kreacher has been a good elf, master Weasley.”

This was, frankly, debatable, but now was not the time to debate it. “Kreacher, where’s Harry?” He asked it as gently as he could, but he was starting to be worried. First Mrs. Black being weird, and now Kreacher?

“Please have mercy, master Weasley,” he whined, ears now lying flat to his head like a cat. “My master never meant any harm, no. No harm to the girl, no harm to master Weasley, no harm.”

What the actual fuck. “Look, I’ll find him myself,” he huffed, losing patience, confused, worried, and starting to get really cold—how was it so cold in here? “Harry!” He turned, ran for the kitchen stairs. “Harry, where are you?”

There wasn’t really anywhere in the house a shout from the hallway wouldn’t be heard. Ron climbed the stairs, then went up and down the first and second floors, shouting Harry’s name. Kreacher trailed after him, a half-dozen yards behind, keeping up a steady stream of apologies under his breath that was getting increasingly annoying. The higher he went, the stronger the sense that something was wrong became. He made it all the way to the attic before he heard a strangled voice answer him from deep in one of the rooms. “Ron?”

Harry was in the room that had belonged to Sirius, its faded muggle girls on motorcycles looking weird in the feeble light. He was hiding in the back of the closet, curled up in a ball, when Ron finally found him. Shaking. “Hey.” Ron’s instincts were screaming at him not to go into that closet. He was half afraid that wasn’t really Harry in there, was some kind of shape-shifter, or a boggart, or something, that he would look up and not have a face. But Ron knew that wasn’t true. He’d know his best friend from a shape-shifter. He’d know Harry from any evil thing trying to wear Harry’s shape. And Harry would never, absolutely ever, be his boggart. Ron refused to give in to that instinct, bent almost double, got down on one knee. “Hey, Harry. What’s wrong, mate?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a tiny voice, backing away from Ron. “Is Ginny all right?”

“Yeah. She’s scared, but otherwise, she’s fine. What happed?”

“You should go.”

“I think that’s probably the dumbest thing you’ve ever said to me, Harry, and it’s got some pretty stiff competition.” Ron was just about done with all this creepy bullshit. He glared at his wand, which was still not doing what he wanted it to be doing, the light looking feeble and sad. He brandished it. “And I said _lumos_ , damn it.”

Light. Momentarily blinding. Filling the closet. A wash of it, over both of them, out into the room, over Kreacher lurking in the bedroom doorway. It faded to a normal _lumos_ after a moment, but something of the cold, clinging, suffocating quality of the darkness had gone. It was just the darkness you would expect in a closet in an attic at midnight in London, now—a faint play of muggle streetlights on the ceiling outside.

Harry shuddered, looked up at him. The room was behaving itself, but Harry still looked as bad as Ron had ever seen him, as bad as he’d looked the night he’d come out of the maze in fourth year. Almost gray, with dark circles under his eyes. His glasses were crooked. “What was _that_?”

Ron shrugged. “ _Lumos_ , I guess,” he said, fooling nobody. They both knew that hadn’t just been a _lumos_. “We’ll figure it out later. Maybe we’ll ask Hermione. Come here, okay? What are you doing in here?”

Harry flinched. “Hiding?” he suggested. He had the grace to look embarrassed about it. He was starting to uncurl, just a little. 

Ron wished he wasn’t down in the corner of the roof like that, so Ron could get to him without trapping him—he’d seen how much Harry hated being trapped in a corner, but he wanted to… “Just come here, okay? And you can tell me about it?”

“Okay.” Harry leaned toward him, slowly, let Ron catch his hands and pull him close, let himself be drawn into Ron’s lap. He’d somehow managed to lose weight in the two days since Ron left, a feat Ron hadn’t thought Harry was capable of without actually dying. He was still shaking, and freezing cold. “I’m sorry. This is stupid.”

“Yeah, probably.” Ron shrugged, tried tightening his arms around Harry. Sometimes he didn’t like that, felt trapped, tensed up. Tonight, it seemed to work all right, Harry leaned into him, and when Ron ran a hand through his hair, some of the tension in him eased. “It’s all right, though. I’ve got you.”

They sat like that for a while, still in Sirius’s closet, Harry slowly calming until his breathing was steady and he pulled away. Ron let him go. He sat looking at his knees as if he didn’t know what to say. Finally, in a carefully casual voice, “Are you back already?”

Ron suppressed a sigh. That was his Harry, all right. Briefly, Ron considered not telling him, but there wasn’t really a plausible alternative. “Not really. Ginny sent me an owl.” Harry flinched. “The owl just said I needed to come home. I think she was right.”

Harry bit his lip, didn’t look up. “Hermione needs you.”

“I know she does,” Ron said. “And I’m going back soon. But you need me, too. I promised I’d never not be there when you needed me again.”

“You didn’t.”

“I promised _myself_.” He squeezed Harry’s knee. Harry was wearing a pair of Ron’s old jeans, he noticed. They were too big, but not as much too big as Harry’s own jeans were. “Can you tell me what happened? Ginny said you had an argument and then she was home.”

Harry shuddered, shrunk in on himself a little. Almost inaudibly, pleading, “She’s okay?”

“You definitely scared her,” Ron admitted, “but other than that, she’s absolutely, perfectly fine.” Harry nodded. “Come on. What happened?”

Harry’s hand darted out, grabbed Ron’s. His grip was almost painful. “D’you remember fifth year, when I would get so _mad_ , and it felt like it wasn’t _me_? I… I thought it was _him_. I thought he was in my head.” Now his grip _was_ painful. “It was like that, except it… it can’t have been him, he’s dead, he’s definitely dead, I felt him die, and I watched them burn the body. And I couldn’t hold it back. She’s definitely all right?”

Ron nodded, squeezed Harry’s hand in return. “Everything’s all right,” Ron reassured him. He wished Dumbledore was alive, or someone else they could ask about this. On the other hand, apparently Dumbledore had been wrong about this before. “Have you been up here all this time?” Harry nodded. “If you’ll come out of here, I’ll make us some tea and see if we can find something to eat. Sound good? Only I left without breakfast.” Harry would scoff at _let me feed you because you haven’t eaten_ from anyone but Ron’s mum, but _let me feed you because I haven’t eaten_ usually worked on him.

“Pretty sure my kitchen’s a mess,” Harry admitted.

“Pretty sure that’s what _reparo_ is for, mate.” Ron gave Harry’s hand a gentle tug. “Come on.”

* * *

Ron had managed to get some tea and toast into Harry, assisted in the kitchen by an _extremely_ obsequious Kreacher, before tucking him into Sirius’s bed. Harry had nicked a duvet from one of the beds in Gryffindor tower, and he was apparently camping out under it in Sirius’s room. He was, frankly, adorable, curled up under the red and gold blanket so that only his messy hair—messier than usual, just at the moment, with dust from the back of the closet clinging to it—showed above the edge.

Ron frowned, reminded himself that his days of watching Harry sleep and thinking he was adorable were over. He, Ron, was all grown up now, and engaged to the most wonderful woman he’d ever imagined. Harry, meanwhile, was also all grown up, and seeing Ron’s… well, actually, probably not. Ron considered the devastation in the kitchen, how badly frightened Ginny had been. That sort of outburst had probably been what Hermione would call a “red flag.” It probably wouldn’t be accurate for Ron to think of Harry as _seeing his sister_ any longer. Which was another worry for Ron to add to his growing plate, actually. Knowing that Ginny was with someone he could trust not to hurt her had been a load off Ron’s mind to say the least. Not that Ginny couldn’t take care of herself, but Ron wanted to see her happy, too.

It had only been a few hours since Ron had woken up, was early afternoon in Australia still. He wasn’t remotely sleepy, but Harry had said, “Stay with me?” in a tiny voice when Ron tried to leave after tucking him in, so Ron had settled against his back the way he had when Harry had a nightmare at school, wrapped around him, and Harry had curled back against him with a little sigh. Once Harry was asleep, Ron tried to slip out of bed, but before he made it out of the room Harry had started to make fitful little noises in his sleep, so Ron came back and sat with him, rubbed his shoulder until he settled. 

Well, sleep wasn’t happening, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He decided to fill the rest of the night writing a letter explaining things to Hermione. Kreacher was more than happy to bring him some ink and parchment and a lap desk, and also, when he asked hopefully, a large sandwich: he still hadn’t had any breakfast. That “Please be merciful master” attitude from Kreacher hadn’t stopped, and was starting to give Ron the creeps. He hoped Hermione didn’t think he’d done anything to cause it.

For that matter, Ron hoped Hermione wouldn’t be upset when he came back to Australia with Harry in tow: based on what he’d seen so far, he didn’t think leaving Harry here on his own had been a good idea. Besides, finding out just _exactly_ what had happened here was probably going to take research, and Hermione was great at that sort of thing.

Sometime around sunrise, Ron had dozed off in spite of himself, the darkness and the quiet conspiring against him. He woke with the sun fully up to a tapping on the window: Ginny’s owl, Pig, was outside. (He was, technically, still Ron’s owl, but it was obvious that Ginny used him more than Ron did.) Harry rolled over and sighed when Ron got up to let the owl in. Ginny’s note was calmer than her last had been. “I told mum everything. I’m sorry. She asked.” And then, “Mum says you’d better have Harry over here in time for lunch, and dad says he needs to talk to you.”

Ron tore a blank strip from the bottom of the parchment with his letter to Hermione. “We’ll be there as soon as he wakes up.” And then, since he might as well do damage control, “Harry’s really glad you’re okay.”

By the time Ron had finished writing out the reply, catching Pig, and tying the note to him, Harry was sitting up in bed. His hair was sticking out in all directions, his eyes were wide and sleepy, and the enormous T-shirt he’d been wearing yesterday was falling off his shoulder. It really didn’t matter what Ron told himself about his serious grown up feelings for Hermione, Harry _was_ adorable. He was staring at Ron in that unfocused way he did when he wasn’t wearing his glasses, the way that suggested he was just seeing a big ginger blur. Then he blushed, looked away, fumbled around on the table by the bed for his glasses, put them on. “What was it?” he asked his shoulder.

“Well, mum knows I’m back in England and she expects us for lunch,” he said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You need a shower, you got yourself really dusty in that closet.”

Harry laughed. “Yeah, um. Really thank you.”

Ron snorted, started to chase him down to the bathroom to shower. “I’ll get you clean clothes,” he said. “And then we can—” He had meant to say _pack_ , but he hesitated. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to take Harry to Australia with him. The Ministry would be sure to want him—he was, after all, the Savior of the Wizarding World. It was stupid and selfish of Ron, he considered, to want to be able to keep an eye on both Harry and Hermione. They had both said, more than once, that they didn’t need him, that he could stay with the other, and certainly it would be selfish of Ron to make Harry leave Britain _now_ of all times just so that he, Ron, could be with Hermione without feeling guilty. He wouldn’t ask, he decided. He’d figure something else out. “Er. We can go to the Burrow,” he concluded. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Harry nodded. “I haven’t felt right going there without you.”

“Shower,” Ron told him. _Are you kidding? You’re mum’s favorite child,_ is what he was thinking, but he didn’t really want to get into that right now. He wanted to get Harry ready for the burrow, first thing, had a vague notion that if they went early, there might still be some breakfast. Ron had missed his mum’s cooking, and the more meals he could get into Harry the better.

He had to hunt a little to find Harry’s clothes: Harry had moved them into the wardrobe in one of the third floor bedrooms, not Sirius’s room in the attic. It took some rummaging to find something worth wearing. Outside of school robes, Harry really did dress worse than Ron did. At least Ron’s family weren’t proper old-school purebloods, who wore nothing but robes. One of the biggest advantages of being a bunch of blood traitors had to be wearing trousers. Ron found him a shirt that was a color other than dishwater gray—a sort of faded mossy green—and a pair of jeans that appeared to be one of the too-small pairs of Ron’s that Hermione had packed last summer, along with pants whose elastic a quick _reparo_ could put back in place, and a pair of socks that matched and weren’t too full of holes. By the time he’d found them, Harry had finished in the shower and wandered into the bedroom, a towel slung around his waist.

Harry had _definitely_ lost weight since Ron left, which was disappointing. He’d been managing to put a little back on after the camping trip, between staying at Bill’s and being dragged back to the Burrow for at least one meal a day. Ron didn’t comment, though, because that sort of comment made Harry self-conscious again. It had taken Harry _years_ to be willing to take his shirt off around Ron. He’d been in the _take my clothes into the showers with me, live with slightly damp pajamas until we learn the water-repelling charm in third year_ camp at Hogwarts. Ron knew the story of most of Harry’s scars, anyway, had been there for most of them. He’d first seen the red oval where the locket had bitten him in the Forest of Dean; the first time he’d seen the lightning over Harry’s heart to match the one on his forehead had been in the showers in Gryffindor tower the morning after the battle. Some were a lot older, like the wide puncture above his right elbow from the basilisk fang. Ron had never asked him about the oldest ones. 

Ron realized he’d been looking a little too long, now, thrust an armload of clothes into Harry’s arms. “Here, get dressed,” he said, “mum’s waiting.”


	2. A Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ron learns important information he doesn't want to bother Harry and Hermione with.

Harry apparated them to the Burrow. All things considered, side-along apparition made Ron less nervous than when he did it himself. He just trusted other people with it more than he trusted himself. Harry didn’t let go of Ron’s arm right away, when they arrived on the path to the Burrow, steadied himself and took a deep breath. They exchanged a wry smile. Harry had never much liked apparition, either.

It wasn’t just apparition. Harry had something he wanted to say before they went up, and Ron waited, gave him a moment to say it. Sometimes it took Harry a minute to work up the nerve to say something. “Last night,” he said, finally. Ron nodded encouragement. “If it happens again, can you stop it like you did last night? What did you do?”

Ron had absolutely no idea what he’d done, other than refuse to play along with the general creepiness of the house. “ _Lumos_?” he suggested. Harry tried to give him a laugh for that, but it didn’t work. “Okay. I’m not sure. But whatever I did, I’m sure any wizard could do it if they just kept their head. I’m sure mum could do it. You’ll be fine.” He put an arm around Harry’s shoulders, gave him a squeeze. “It’ll be fine,” he promised. “We always work it out, right?”

Now _that_ got a smile, and a nod. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

Ron’s mum descended on them as soon as they were inside the door, with hugs and kisses and deploring how thin they were and she did indeed have a few bacon sandwiches set aside from breakfast in hope that they would arrive early, and Bill would like a note from Harry when he got here, and Ronnie, your father is waiting for you in his shed, he needs to talk with you.

When Ron went out to the shed, leaving Harry in his mum’s capable hands, he found his dad shoulders-deep in the engine block of an enormous motorbike. The shed had always been his dad’s retreat, and Ron didn’t really blame him for being out here now. Ron, after all, had retreated to Australia. “Dad? Mum said you wanted to talk to me.”

“You made it.” His dad sounded a little more satisfied by that statement than he might normally have expected—as if the opposite had been a real possibility. He came out of the motorcycle, his face composed into an expression of studied seriousness. “Son, now that you’re all grown up and doing things, there’s something that I really should explain to you.”

Oh. Oh no. Ron felt his face going red. “Um, dad, Bill already explained about, you know, girls and things… a few years ago, actually.”

There was a moment of silence, during which his dad’s serious face absolutely crumbled, passing through confusion and embarrassment on the way to laughter. “Good! Good. That’s good. That’s not what this is about, but that’s very good.” He coughed, shook his head. “Oh my goodness.”

Relief flooded him. That had been something that Ron really did not need in his week. “Then what is it?”

“First,” his dad said, now wiping grease from his hands and leaning against the wall of the shed, “I’d like you to tell me what you did last night. I’ll tell you that I’ve smoothed things over at the Ministry, and the muggles in the area think it was some sort of freak weather event.”

Ron blinked at him. “Err…” he hadn’t done anything that muggles might have seen, had he? Unless, “… _lumos_?” His dad shook his head. “I don’t know. I think Harry was doing something creepy… I kind of wanted to ask you about that, actually, it was—”

“We’ll get to Harry,” his dad said. He had the same proud smile he’d had the first time Ron beat him at chess. “We’re talking about what _you_ did first. Did you know the flash encompassed most of the block, was visible from several miles away, and noticeably bleached the grime on the pavement?”

“Not _lumos_ , then,” Ron said. It was the only thing he could think to say. This was just silly. “Miles?”

His dad nodded confirmation. “Miles. I’m pretty sure the main effect was dispelling any Dark magic in the vicinity. That sound about right?”

“Oh.” That made a certain amount of sense. “I guess that sounds right. I didn’t know I could do that.”

His dad leaned forward, squeezed his shoulder, leaving a bit of a trace of grease. “I suppose I should just begin at the beginning,” he said, after a moment. “You know I’ve always said you shouldn’t judge people by their bloodlines. That being a pureblood doesn’t make you any better than anyone else.”

Ron nodded. “Yeah, dad, I know. I’m engaged to a muggle-born, remember?”

He grinned, then, still proud, but also obviously delighted. “I do remember,” he said. “My grandfather would be livid. I’m so proud. But that’s, no, that’s beside the point. It’s important that you remember that this doesn’t necessarily make you any better than anyone else, either.” He hesitated. “Stronger, yes, but not better. There are a few wizard bloodlines in which certain powers appear.”

“Like the way Harry figures he’s descended from one of the three brothers in the story?” Ron suggested. His father winced. “What?”

“We’ll get to Harry,” Arthur said again. “We’re talking about you. About us. The Weasleys. Merlin’s descendants.”

Ron stared. He looked around. This sounded like the kind of bill of goods the twins might have tried to sell him when he was small. George _probably_ wasn’t in any mood to be pranking him, though, and his dad had never taken advantage of Ron’s gullibility, even when he was very small and very stupid. Still, “Seriously?” Arthur nodded. “Then why…?” He made an inarticulate gesture that took in the Burrow, with its slightly lopsided extra floors; the chickens and the goats and his mother’s vegetable patch; and Ron’s own self, the red hair and freckles and second-hand clothes. “Why the Weasleys?”

He’d expected his dad to be angry at that. He had every right to be. Instead, he chuckled. “You know, I asked my dad the exact same thing?” he said. “Merlin was a vagabond magician in the court at Camelot. There’s power in the bloodline, son, but there was never any money.”

“But if there’s power—” he didn’t know why he was saying this. He really shouldn’t. He’d always known his father did his best… except, did he?

“Are you suggesting we should… what? Go raid the Malfoys and take their money?”

“Well, no, obviously not, but… I don’t know.”

Very seriously, then, “Do you remember when I told Lucius Malfoy that he and I have very different ideas of what disgraces the name of wizard?” he asked. Ron nodded. “You don’t accumulate that much money without doing something at least slightly disgraceful, Ron.”

“But Harry’s family—”

Arthur made a dismissive gesture. “Later,” he said. “In all seriousness, Ron? If you kids had been in any danger of starving, I wouldn’t have hesitated to do something disgraceful. But we’ve been happy, we’ve had everything we’ve needed. And the last few decades, it’s been better to stay subtle. And _that_ is what we’re having this talk about.”

Ron nodded, feeling a little chastised. “Sorry, dad.” He never, ever wanted to make his father feel bad about what they had. He looked at his feet. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“It’s okay.” Squeezed his shoulder again. “Now. About Merlin. If you’re going to keep doing the kind of magic you did last night, I think I probably have something for you. Come with me.” He led the way to the other end of the shed.

The change of subject came as something of a surprise. “What is it?” It was going to be a book, Ron just knew it was going to be a book. Full of difficult spells whose incantation was definitely not _lumos damn it_.

It was not a book. There was a hidden drawer in his dad’s tool chest, was the first surprise. And in the hidden drawer, an old stone box, with elaborate knotwork carved on the lid. His dad lifted the box out, offered it to him. “My dad couldn’t open this,” he said. “Neither can I. Let’s see if you can.”

The lid came clear easily in Ron’s hands, making his dad burst into that wide, proud smile again. Inside the box was a long, pale wand, in the old style, the surface carved lightly but precisely with the same kind of knotwork as the lid of the box. “Um, dad.” Ron looked up. “What’s…?”

“Fourteen inches. Willow and unicorn hair. Merlin’s wand.”

“That’s—my wand was—that is, the one from Ollivander’s was…”

“I was delighted,” his dad said. “After that business with your sister, I was afraid, well.”

“You mean the diary? Because horcruxes are—”

“No, I mean—well, she’s a sister. The line of Merlin is meant to pass to the seventh son, and…” he shrugged. “That didn’t work out. To be honest, I don’t really hold with destiny, but sometimes destiny doesn’t really care if we hold with it, it’s going to out anyway. The box opened for you. Pick it up, see how it likes you.”

“Merlin’s wand.” Ron was still trying to catch up with this conversation. “Actual Merlin’s actual wand? That belonged to actual Merlin?” His dad nodded. “And you want me to see if it likes me.” Another nod. “Me?”

“Ron. Pick up the wand,” his dad said, almost laughing. “You know I’ve never actually seen it? The box hasn’t been opened since before I was born. See how it likes you.”

Tentatively, afraid it was either going to bite him or be inert in his hands, Ron picked up the wand. He wasn’t sure what he expected it to do if it _did_ like him. Maybe send up a shower of sparks the way his own wand had at Ollivander’s? This was definitely not a shower of sparks. It was a whirlwind of sparks, surrounding him, stirring the various debris of disassembled machinery on the floor of the shed. Ron jumped back, almost dropped the wand, gasped, needing a moment’s effort to stop the storm. “I… think it likes me?”

His dad nodded, lips twitching as he struggled not to smile. “I think it likes you,” he agreed, setting the box carefully back in the hidden drawer. The smile broke through, then, wide and proud again. “Well. My Ronnie.”

“Wait, though. How do _we_ have Merlin’s wand? Isn’t that—doesn’t the Wizengamot use that?”

His dad waved a dismissive hand. “That’s Merlin’s _staff_. Largely ceremonial, no particular power to speak of. Something druidic, I think. This is his _wand_. The wand that built Camelot. We don’t bring it out often. I believe the last time was in the seventeenth century, when… well, you know. There hasn’t been much call for it, since the Statute of Secrecy.” Ron did not know. He briefly wished he had stayed awake through a few History of Magic classes. This probably wasn’t the time to remind his dad that he had scraped an Acceptable in History only by borrowing Hermione’s notes. “I probably should have given this to you sooner,” Arthur continued, “but you didn’t seem to need it. All things considered, I think you might, now.”

“Why?” Ron had really been looking forward to a little peace and quiet with Voldemort gone, once they found Hermione’s parents and figured out whatever Harry’s new problem was.

“There’s something big coming,” his dad said, calmly. “The runes have been showing it for years, but it was hard to separate from the Dark Lord business. Here.” He dug through another drawer in his tool chest, pushing aside a small pile of weird bent metal bits to pull out a heavy cloth bag, which he tossed to Ron. “Have a look. It’s very, very big. A three-stone pull finds it.”

“Um, dad, you know I failed Divination, right?”

“You—oh, right, Harry’s thing. I guess it’s hard to learn to read a compass when you’ve got a magnet on your lap. I’ll show you how to read these when you’ve got a few days free, then. Give them here, I’ll draw one.”

Ron handed them back, watched over his shoulder, trying to remember a single thing that Professor Trelawney had said ever. It had seemed mostly to consist of reminding him to pay attention and predicting that Harry was going to die, so not particularly helpful. He was pretty sure she hadn’t covered these, some sort of flat disks, maybe wood or bone, with a pair of runes on either side. 

His dad spread three of them across the surface of his tool chest, pointed to them in turn. “The storm. The star bounced off of it. And the ocean… oop!” His hand darted out and caught the stone. “Falling off the table. Nothing real specific, but I didn’t exactly ask a specific question. You’ll probably be able to get a much better reading. It’s your destiny, after all. But you get the gist.”

“I guess,” said Ron, who wasn’t sure he did. Except that his dad was worried, and his dad wasn’t real easy to worry. “Harry says Voldemort is definitely dead,” he offered, “and he would know, wouldn’t he?

“Not a Dark Lord,” his dad said, firmly. “The thing you have to understand about Dark Lords is, they typically turn up every generation or so. There’s usually a Hero that turns up with them, like Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Voldemort was… unusual. Not least because of the prophecy. How did you know Harry was a Peverell?”

“Er.” On the one hand, this was his dad. On the other hand, Harry was very careful with his secrets, and Ron didn’t want to go telling anything to anyone that he didn’t have to. “It has to do with some of the clues Professor Dumbledore left us,” he finally said. “I’m… still kind of… I still can’t talk about a lot of that stuff. Harry can talk about it when he’s ready. But I promised.”

“Clues about the wand, I suppose. I really should have realized what that was. Albus was a Peverell, too—when he and Grindelwald were first squaring off, my grandfather wasn’t completely certain which one was going to be the Dark Lord, he decided to just let them fight it out, and clean up later if the wrong one won. But the Potters are out of Ignotus’s line—the youngest brother. They kept themselves out of trouble for a very, very long time, honestly, messing around with hair-care potions and the like. But they were due. My dad was dead certain that was what _mark him as his equal_ meant, frankly.” He went quiet for a moment, then, “Do you remember on the first day of school, when your mum told you to keep an eye on Harry?”

Ron nodded. “I would’ve done, anyway,” he said.

“She didn’t mean make sure he eats his vegetables and gets enough sleep, Ron. We wanted you to watch him.” He laughed. “And then you brought this sweet little boy into my kitchen and I looked at him and said, no, that’s never the next Dark Lord.”

“And you were right,” Ron said, firmly. “That’s what you’re thinking, right? After yesterday? Listen, Harry’s had a really rough time, all right? He’ll be okay. He just needs some time to calm down. _I know Harry_ , dad. I _know_ him. He’s my best friend. He hasn’t got an evil bone in his body.”

“I did tell you I don’t really hold with destiny,” his dad said. “Nonetheless. You felt what happened yesterday from _Australia_. And he has the Elder Wand. Which is bad news in the hands of _any_ Dark Lord, much less a Peverell.”

“He doesn’t even have the wand any more,” Ron countered, not particularly wanting to think about .

“What do you mean, he doesn’t have it? He caught it.”

“And then he fixed _his_ wand, and then he… well, I know where it is. But I know that in confidence. He doesn’t have it.”

“He just left the Elder Wand somewhere and walked away?” Arthur raised his eyebrows. “And now I’m starting to have more confidence in not believing in destiny. And at least he hasn’t got the stone and the cloak. Listen, Ronnie? If there’s anyone who can stop this from escalating, it’s you three. But you hold on to Merlin’s wand, and you keep an eye on him, all right?”

“I’ll make sure he eats his vegetables and gets enough sleep, dad,” Ron said. “And I… do you know what happened? He scared himself, worse than he scared Ginny, really.”

“Dark magic,” Arthur answered. “And just, a _lot_ of magic. Remember when you were first learning, and the hardest part of learning a spell was holding back enough to do _just_ the spell?” Ron nodded. “It isn’t like that for most people. Most eleven-year-olds are flexing all the magic available to them in order to lift a feather, rather than clubbing trolls with the hovering charm.” He smiled again, then, “Muggles have a wonderful analogy they could use here, actually. _Drinking from a fire hose._ It’s not a hose full of fire, though, you see, they have these—”

“I know,” Ron interrupted. “Hermione explained it to me, once, sometime in second year I think. We were working on… I don’t really remember which charm. One that it was hard to hold back for, anyway. It’s not like that for everyone?”

“It was like that for _Hermione_? Really?” Arthur looked momentarily shocked, then shrugged it off. “But no. No it isn’t. And if my suspicions are correct, Harry is drinking from the fire hose for the first time, except the fire hose is full of Dark magic, and Dark magic is fueled by emotions, and unless I’m very much mistaken Harry’s emotions are doing a lot of things right now.” Ron nodded. There was no sense denying _that_ , anyway. “I’m sure if anyone can help him, it’s you,” he said. “But also, you hold on to Merlin’s wand. Understand?”

Ron nodded. He wanted very badly to laugh right now. Merlin’s wand. Merlin’s—shit. This was going to significantly limit his cursing vocabulary. He would have to ask Harry and Hermione to teach him some muggle curses.

“And… next time, try _finite arcanum_ ,” his dad suggested. “It should do for most things, and be a little less visible.”

* * *

Ron’s mum sent him out to the garden to find Harry, who was sitting on the edge of the pond staring out over the downs, knees drawn up to his chest. Ron sat down next to him. Harry looked very much like Harry, and not at all like a Dark Lord or a Peverell or whatever else he might be destined for. They sat together in silence for a while.

“Ginny and I officially broke up,” Harry said, finally, his tone even, steady, quiet. “Again. Er. I said I was sorry. She said she was, too. It was a good idea.”

There wasn’t really any way, after the conversation with his dad, that Ron could disagree with that. “Are you okay?” he asked, instead.

“I’m fine.” Another silence. “Bill’s here. Gringotts unfroze my bank accounts.”

“Nice.” Ron didn’t know what else to say about that, either. _You don’t accumulate that much money without doing something slightly disgraceful._ But his dad had been talking about the Malfoys, who were _rich_ rich. And all Harry had done to accumulate it was to have a bunch of people die.

Suddenly, “Can I come to Australia with you?” Harry asked.

“Didn’t the Ministry want to keep you close?” Ron asked him.

“Fuck the Ministry.” It came out of his mouth in almost a snarl, accompanied for a moment by a flash of cold. Harry froze, clenched his fists, drew a deep breath, and when he continued, his voice was soft and steady. “Fuck the Order of Merlin, fuck showing up at banquets, fuck the entire country wanting to rub me for luck, just, fuck everything. I just, they can manage without me for a couple of weeks, can’t they?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“I just don’t want you to go away and leave me here,” he said, very quietly. “Please can I come?”

“I wanted to ask you to,” Ron admitted. He wondered how much of what his dad had said he should actually tell Harry. Except, “My dad knows what I did last night,” he offered. “It definitely wasn’t _lumos_. He says I should try _finite arcanum_ next time. Be less flashy.”

Silence again. With a deep breath, “Is that what he wanted to talk to you about, then? Freak management tips?”

“Don’t call yourself that,” he said, sharply. He didn’t know what else to tell Harry that didn’t feel like bragging. “He wanted to give me something. Tell me what he thinks is going on. Apparently I’m descended from Merlin.” There was no way to say it that _didn’t_ sound like bragging, but he had to just come out with it.

“Nice.” That was a real smile from Harry, a glance in Ron’s direction. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t, looked back out over the pond.

“He thinks you losing it like that has to do with the Elder Wand,” he said. “With the Hallows. And being descended from the Peverells.”

“You told him about that?” Harry sounded hurt.

Ron shook his head. “He told me,” Ron countered. “I did let slip I knew about the Peverells. But he only knows about the Wand. It’d be fine, you know. If he knew. But I’m not going around spouting your secrets.” More silence, but the set of Harry’s shoulders relaxed. Ron wondered if he should say it, but Harry had always claimed he’d rather know the worst than not. “He thinks it’s Dark magic, what you did yesterday.”

“No shit.” Harry sounded bitter about it. “Are you sure you want me to come with you?”

“Harry. You won’t kill spiders. This great hairy thing with too many legs and pincers a foot long on my pillow and you’re talking to it like, ‘hey, little fellow, you can’t be here, let’s get you outside!’ You’ll forgive me if I’m less than terrified of you. _For_ you, sure.” That got a snort out of Harry. “I’m pretty sure between the three of us, you and me and Hermione can handle a little bit of extra Dark magic. You watch. We’ll get to Australia and Hermione will reach into her bag and say, ‘oh, sure, I’ve got a copy of _The Boy’s Own Guide to Controlling Dark Powers_ right here, I got it for the muffin recipes.’” And that was a real laugh, even if it did lead to a bit more silence.

“You really think we can do this?”

“Apparently last night I dispelled all the dark magic in a city block. And bleached the pavement. You’re not the only one going a little over the top.”

A little more of his tension drained, then. “You really want me to come with you?”

“ _Yes_ , absolutely I want you to come with me, Harry. Listen, you want to know what my dad said? He said he met you and said, no, that boy is never the next Dark Lord. And I say the same thing. You’re my _best friend_. We’ll work it out.”

Harry lunged then, hit him hard enough to knock him over, hugged him hard. He didn’t do that often—usually it was the way it had been last night, Ron dragging Harry into his arms. It was a surprise, and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs, Harry on top of him for a moment, looking very serious, very close. “Really thank you,” he said, softly. “Really.”

There were two options, at that moment. The one Ron chose was to tickle Harry’s side, because, he would later think, he was basically stupid. The noise Harry made was somewhere between a laugh and a shriek, and then he retaliated. Ron wasn’t particularly ticklish, and he had a substantial height and weight advantage over Harry in wrestling. Honestly, as fragile as Harry looked today, Ron’s main handicap was trying not to hurt him in the process of getting him pinned on his back in the grass. Of course, Harry wasn’t as fragile as he looked, but it was still a foregone conclusion.

They were both panting with laughter and exertion, though, and Harry was looking up at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, grinning. _Damn_ if he wasn’t adorable. He hated being held down, and Ron held him only long enough that he’d know he’d lost before easing off, letting his arms go, taking is weight off him. Harry stayed where he was for a moment, blinked once, swallowed very hard. A little shudder went through him, and it was suddenly very important for Ron to get off him, stand up, offer him a hand. “Um.” Still panting a little. “Want to, er. Go up to the house?”

“Yeah, let’s, uh.” Harry reached up, took Ron’s hand and hauled himself upright, let go as soon as he was standing. “Let’s see if your mum needs help getting lunch.”


	3. Meanwhile, In Australia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione designs a spell.

Ron had left at nine in the morning. By ten, Hermione had a telephone directory open on the desk in the hotel room, and was very much wishing she’d chosen a less common surname for her parents. There was a column and a half of Wilkinses in the book. She scowled at it. One option, of course, would be to go through and telephone all of them, from a coin-operated phone several streets over in a muggle area. This didn’t seem like a good idea. After all, was she a witch or wasn’t she?

What she needed was some kind of directory magic, or some sort of person-finding that would use Hermione’s memory of them—or better yet, their kinship tie. That was a better idea, basing it on kinship ties. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Honestly anyone who’d been able to get a bit of her blood during the war would have been able to track her parents with an appropriate tracking spell. Her stomach clenched at the thought of the times people might have collected a bit of her blood; a brief flash of Bellatrix’s silver knife crossed her mind’s eye.

No, she wasn’t going to think about that. And surely her parents were fine, they were so well hidden that even she couldn’t find them. But she would fix that. And she would fix it by finding the appropriate spell, or adapting one to suit. There was something on tracking spells in the NEWT Charms book, she was reasonably certain, and she had that in her bag. Charms book in one hand, muggle notebook and mechanical pencil in the other, and telephone directory shoved carelessly to the side, Hermione sat down to solve her problem.

Honestly, doing research was immensely relaxing. Hermione hadn’t had an occasion to do real, serious spell research since she left school, and she’d missed it so badly. While she was somewhat hampered by her lack of access to a proper library, she did still have all the books from the Horcrux hunt in her bag. By the time it started to get dark, interrupting her concentration by forcing her to turn on the lights, Hermione was well on her way to developing exactly the spell that she needed.

She supposed that, all other things being equal, she ought to get something to eat. There was a sandwich shop down the block from the hotel. Some exercise in the fresh air every day was also very important. She would do that before it got fully dark.

She would do that before it got to be seven and the sandwich shop was closed.

She would do that first thing in the morning, and tonight she would eat one of the granola bars she’d stashed in her bag in an act of foresight she wished she’d had when she packed this bag the first time.

She would not eat all of the granola bars.

In the morning, when she went out to get a sandwich from the sandwich shop, she would also get a new box of granola bars.

It was growing light outside the windows again. Hermione was very close to having her spell worked out. As soon as she was done, she would turn off the lights, and then take a nap.

The owl tapping on the window really did interrupt her, at least. Standing up, she realized how stiff she had grown, sitting at the awkward little hotel room desk for… she glanced at her watch. Very nearly a full twenty-four hours, that was no good, she shouldn’t do that. She let the owl in, took the letter from its leg, and let it fly away without waiting for a reply. The letter was from Ron, she knew his handwriting immediately.

_Dear Hermione,_

_I miss you already. I am here with Harry. He’s having a hard time of it, and I am going to talk him into coming back there with me._ (Hermione did her best to suppress a surge of jealousy.) _I hope you will be able to help me figure out what’s up with him. He was doing something strange and creepy._

The next paragraph looked like it had been written over a place where previous ink was siphoned out of the page magically.

_I think I know what Harry did now. I’ll explain when I see you, it’s complicated. We are both all right._

_I hope we will make it back to Australia… you’ll be getting this in the morning your time… I hate time zones. I’m going to get some sleep, and then we’re getting a portkey. So tomorrow morning in England, will it be tomorrow night or tonight in Australia? Harry says, it is later in Australia, not earlier, so it will be tomorrow night there, but tomorrow morning here, but when you get this it will be tomorrow morning there, but still tonight here._

The letter switched to Harry’s handwriting.

_I think Ron stayed up all night with me last night. He’s had a long day. I think it’s been something like thirty hours long. I’m sorry. We’ll be there Wednesday night._

_Love, Harry and Ron_

And in Ron’s handwriting again,

_P.S. I love you._

Hermione looked at the letter, smiled fondly. Honestly, she’d missed having Harry’s problems around, too. Ron was surprisingly capable of looking after himself—she’d never really thought of him that way, but without Harry around, Hermione’s life seemed too simple.

Staying up all night had probably actually been an excellent move, she considered, as she went to turn off the lights, then put the finishing touches on her spell design before she got some sleep. They would all be on the same clock.

  


It was fully dark when Hermione jerked awake, shoulders sore from sleeping with her head on her folded arms on the desk. It was the defensive charms that she’d put up around the room that had woken her. She blinked and shook herself: of course, she would always recognize Ron and Harry moving through her defensive spells, but there was something odd about them. There had always been that jangling discord of Dark magic around Harry, of course, though she’d associated it with the link to Voldemort until it hadn’t gone away after the battle. It was a bit different now… or maybe she was just sleepy, or not remembering properly. As for Ron, he somehow felt much more like Ron than he ever had before. It was exceedingly strange. She probably didn’t have time to look up the sensation just now, but she scrawled a quick note about it in Fleschter’s shorthand down the margin of her detection charm notes so she could look it up later. Hermione was exceedingly glad that she had studied Ancient Runes: they made the sensations associated with magic so much easier to describe with precision. 

By the time Ron actually knocked on her door—and it amused her no end that she could actually recognize Ron’s knock from Harry’s—she had straightened herself up a bit, rubbed her cheek furiously to get rid of the imprint of the knit of her sleeve, ruffled her hair to make the flattening of the curls where she’d slept on it a little less obvious. She was standing in front of the door, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, ready to tell them off for whatever they needed her to fix now. She didn't even have to say anything, just gave them her _well, now what have you done_ look. Ron gave back that adorable little lopsided smile that she would forgive for absolutely anything, and Harry pulled his head down between his shoulders like he knew what he did. That little smile of Ron’s really was irresistible. Hermione reached up, pulled Ron down for just a quick peck, which turned into just a little bit more than a peck as his strong arms closed around her: she really had missed him. A bit more than a peck might have escalated a little further yet had Harry not interrupted with an irritated little huff and pushing past the two of them into the room. It had taken her very little time to get used to not having Harry around when she wanted to kiss Ron. And here he was again. Lovely.

That thought had been unkind, Hermione told herself. She liked having Harry's problems around, they kept her occupied. She just wanted to have some private time with her boyfriend, too. Fiance, she reminded herself, glancing at the ring and suppressing a satisfied little smile. Some private time with her fiance.

Still, Harry had a point. She wasn’t exactly going to go snogging Ron in the hallway. She let him in and they spent a few moments getting settled, shedding a few outer winter layers. They really needed some new winter clothes. Hermione should really add that to her to-do list. But first, “Okay, what happened?” Because they’d promised to explain when they got there, and that was never a good sign.

There was a long silence, then, like neither one of them wanted to answer her. Definitely a bad sign. It was Harry that eventually spoke. “So I had a fight with Ginny,” he said, softly. “And I got really mad. Like, that sharp flash of mad where your vision goes black, you know? It was bad. It was bad like it was fifth year, when I thought it must be _him_ in my head. But that was definitely just me, I just don’t, um. And then there was just… a lot of magic. Kind of going everywhere. Like the time I blew up Aunt Marge, except there was a lot more of it and it didn’t have a target. I could keep it from hitting Ginny and I could keep it from hitting anything outside the house but I smashed up the kitchen pretty thoroughly and I think I scared Kreacher. I definitely scared _me_ , and that made it worse. I don’t think I would have been able to stop it if Ron hadn’t come and saved me.” He took a deep breath. “Ron’s dad thinks it’s something to do with the Hallows, but I don’t think so. That felt like _me_. It felt like the time I blew up my aunt. Or when I turned my teacher’s wig blue. It felt like accidental magic, the kind of accidental magic you do when you lose your temper, just _stronger_.”

“Hmm.” Hermione looked at him, considering. She wished _Harry_ had taken Ancient Runes, it seemed likely that Fleschter’s shorthand would have done him excellent service at the moment. “You’re a little old to be doing accidental magic, Harry.” And then she glanced at Ron, who looked shocked. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s what accidental magic feels like to you?” he asked Harry. “I mean—it was always that Dark?”

“Yeah? You lose your temper and it just happens. I mean, that’s kind of what Dark magic is, right? You take that feeling and channel it through the spell? That’s the difference between a curse and a jinx. A jinx is basically a charm, you just say the words and it happens, but a curse you have to feel the right thing.” Now Hermione was staring at him, too. _She_ knew that much of the theory of the Dark Arts, but she wouldn’t have expected _Harry_ to know, Harry had never cared about theory. “What?” he asked her. “I do _read_ , you know.”

She shook her head at him. “I mean, I knew that in theory. I’ve just never seen you do it.” He flipped her off, but smiled a little, which meant she’d been successful.

“No, but I mean,” Ron persisted, “like, _all_ accidental magic? What about the kind where—” Ron stopped himself, exchanged a glance with Hermione. He was obviously thinking the same thing she was, that the question Ron was about to ask might represent a serious misconception about what Harry’s childhood had been like. She wasn’t sure he’d ever had occasion to do the kind of accidental magic where you’re just that excited about something. “All of it?” Ron finished, rather lamely.

Harry shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe not? Aunt Marge felt like that. And setting that snake on Dudley. And this was a _hell_ of a lot more magic. If I’d—” he stopped, looked down. “I’m glad I didn’t have this much magic, as a kid. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Ron went over, sat with him in the room’s big armchair, put an arm around him. “You’re not going to hurt anyone.” Harry cuddled into Ron’s shoulder, and Hermione felt herself melting a little bit: her boys were so cute together. That was one of her favorite things about Ron, the way he could come through when Harry needed a hug, even if she was sometimes a little jealous of his attention. She was glad Ron knew how to make Harry feel better; god knew Hermione didn’t. He never listened to her, that was the problem. “We’ll figure this thing out. What do you think, ‘Mione? Any advice?”

She loved that about Ron, too, that he didn’t think it made him less of a man to ask her advice. She considered. “Well, I mean, I’d need a real library and proper research to figure out _exactly_ what’s going on with you? But it sounds like an anger management problem, honestly. Here, I have a book.” She picked up her bag, started to rummage through it.

“Told you she’d have a book,” Ron told Harry, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye to see him smiling at her.

“It’s not _anger management_ ,” Harry complained. “It’s not just—it felt _wrong_. Ron, tell her.”

“It did,” Ron admitted, “but it actually _happens_ when you get mad. So it’s not the worst idea.”

“Listen, Harry.” Hermione came up with the book she’d been looking for, the one her mum had given her after they’d had one too many shouting matches, the summer after fifth year. That hadn’t been a fun summer, trying to dodge her parents’ questions about exactly how she’d gotten hurt and what all those potions were for. The book itself had been useful, even if she was still annoyed about receiving it. If she’d actually read it that summer, she might not have behaved quite so regrettably later. Harry would probably take to the book better than she had, honestly. “I get that you want to be all Byronesque and doomed? But you actually dealt with your high and lonely destiny and have normal problems like the rest of us mortals. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

Harry scowled at her, but he took the book, which Hermione counted as a victory. She wondered if he knew what _Byronesque_ meant. She’d been proud of that one. He flipped through a couple pages, then said, “You will try to figure out what’s going on when we get back home, though, right?”

“Yes, of course I will,” she scoffed. “I don’t see how I _wouldn’t_ be curious. Honestly, I do wish you two had taken Runes. I might have to see one of these episodes myself in order to get a good description.”

“Good. Then let’s get on finding your parents, yeah?” Harry climbed out of the chair, went over to poke around on the desk. “What’s the plan?”

“Oh, well, I’ve been working on a tracking spell, actually,” Hermione said, brightly, joining him at the desk. Ron came up behind them, looking over their shoulders. “I think that this should work quite well. It should give me a sense of where they are, and keep them from wandering off too far while we’re looking.”

“I thought you were going to use a telephone directory.” Ron sounded mildly disappointed. “And we’d start by telephoning them.”

“Yes, well, there are too many Wilkinses in the directory. That’s a lot of people to telephone. Anyway, what’s the point of being a witch? Here, watch.” She glanced over her notes one more time; the spell was quite ready to be cast, and she had the city map they’d gotten at the portkey office when they arrived to cast it on. The wand motion was quite complex, the incantation more so, but she was proud of getting them distilled as clearly as she had. Refining the motion and incantation was the last step, and she hoped this wasn’t a spell she was likely to have to cast again, so she hadn’t bothered.

Nothing happened.

She turned to ask what Harry and Ron thought, and then she realized that something _had_ happened. They weren’t moving. Nothing was moving, actually, no lights outside the window, nothing. 

Hermione barely had a chance to realize what was happening, though, when Ron shook himself like a dog shaking off water, looked around in confusion. “What was that?” he asked. He looked at Harry, then out the window, then at Hermione again. “What did you do? That felt weird.”

“I, ah.” She blushed a bit, glanced back at her notes. That was what that bit had meant. “Remember when I said I thought it would keep them from moving about too much? It seems I, er. Stopped time.” Then, hopefully, “Well, it didn’t last very long on _you_ , maybe it’s going to wear off fairly quickly?”

“Yeah, I don’t really think so,” Ron said. He glanced at Harry, then, and his eyes went wide for a moment. “Uh-oh.”

Hermione could feel it too, then, a cold seeping into the room. Not an anger management issue, then, exactly. He shouldn’t have been able to do that without any time to do it in. He was doing it anyway. Hermione took a step back, frantically running through spells that might be able to un-freeze time; it wasn’t a question that had come up before. As far as she knew, you couldn’t actually _do_ that, it wasn’t how time worked.

Ron reacted faster than she did, drew his wand out of the pocket his jeans had for the purpose, said “ _Finite Arcanum_ ” with a wand movement she knew for certain she hadn’t seen from him before.

Harry spun with his wand in his hand, and for a moment the room went dark, the cold deepening.

Hermione heard Ron’s voice next to her, completely calm, slightly coaxing. “It’s all right. Hermione stopped time. It was an accident.”

She heard Harry take a deep breath, then swear fluently and quietly. Slowly, light crept back into the room. Harry was pale, fists clenched at his sides, shaking slightly, and Ron had a hand on his shoulder.

Hermione lunged for her notes, scribbled furiously, summarizing _exactly_ what the magic had just done. No, definitely not anger management. Definitely serious Dark magic. And definitely because she’d, “I’m sorry I scared you, Harry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Just, don’t cast things on me. Please. I almost hexed you. Like, a proper hex, not just… whatever that was. Fuck.” He took a step away from Ron, crossed his arms on his chest. “Sorry.”

“You stopped it yourself, that time,” Ron said, encouragingly. He glanced at Hermione. “Glad that got you back into time, though. Back out of time? Hermione? What’s time doing?”

“I don’t really know, Ronald, there’s a lot going on right now.” She heard herself snapping, but honestly, she could only think about so many things at once. “Is that a new wand? Wait a minute—did you just cast _finite arcanum_?”

“Yeah, my dad suggested it. Why?”

“Oh, only because it’s the _single most powerful magical cancellation spell available and the Standard Book of Spells says you should never cast it except as a last resort because it might cancel a lot more than you think it will and it’s been known to—_ ” she heard herself becoming increasingly loud and shrill, stopped herself, drew a deep breath. “That’s not a spell to throw around incautiously, Ronald.”

“Okay,” he said. His tone suggested that he was more inclined to listen to his dad than to the Standard Book of Spells. “Except you _stopped time_ , ‘Mione. I don’t think _finite incantatum_ was going to do much about that.”

He had a point. She’d stopped time. She was _quite_ sure that there was some exclusion law or another that ought to have prevented her from stopping time. She’d counted on there being one when she’d designed the spell, in fact, hadn’t safeguarded against it. She _hated_ when that happened, when her understanding of magic kept her from safeguarding against something impossible except it wasn’t and then she’d made a mess of everything. “All right, but I don’t want you to shoot your brain out of your nostrils trying to cancel my magic,” she said. “It _is_ a new wand, isn’t it?”

“Er, yeah.” Ron blushed, looked down at the wand in his hand. “It’s been in my family,” he said.

“It’s been in my family?” Harry repeated, raising his eyebrows at Ron.

“Well, I mean—I’ll explain later. Time stop? How do we get time back, Hermione?”

“I think by tracking down my parents, actually. I, um. Designed the spell to last until we found them, you see.”

“Well, at least we’ll be able to spot them,” said Harry, who was standing at the window. Hermione looked over, looked past him. Barely visible through the buildings of the city, almost below the horizon a luminous beacon hung in the air.

  


Hermione made a mental note to ensure that all future spells would not stop time. Having time stopped was incredibly inconvenient. For one thing, the only means of transport available was walking. It was quite substantially too far to walk. Hermione did not approve of walking this distance at all. Harry was doing that resigned thing he did, slumped, hands in his pockets, not quite sulking, but definitely shut off for the duration. Meanwhile Ron was cracking jokes, trying to cheer both of them up, and Hermione felt overwhelmingly guilty for not being cheered by it.

Finally, though, footsore and tired and cranky, they arrived at the small suburban house over which the beacon hung. Hermione felt an aching pang of familiarity: it was very much the sort of house she would have expected to find her parents in, reminded her intensely of the house she’d grown up in, if a little smaller. Having arrived, she was uncertain of what to do to actually end the spell. Did they have to actually go inside, or would knocking on the door be sufficient?

Knocking on the door was not sufficient. Breaking into the house was not sufficient, although watching Ron pick the lock on the front door gave her yet another warm, fuzzy surge of affection for him and his practical skills. ( _Alohamora_ , apparently, required time in order to function.) Walking into the dining room, where her parents were apparently lingering over a late dinner, was not sufficient. She had to actually _walk up and touch her father’s shoulder_ in order to snap the world back into motion.

Her father screamed and knocked over his chair, jumping to his feet. Her mother screamed and ran for the telephone. Both were completely understandable reactions from a pair of mild-mannered middle-aged dentists who had just had three strange teenagers suddenly appear in their dining room. There followed several frantic moments during which Hermione wished she had thought a little further ahead and perhaps had her wand out to begin reversing the memory charm. By the time she had her wand out and a frantic spell cast, her mother had the police on the phone. Which was not good at all, honestly, because as the reversal spell settled on her she was frozen in shock for a long moment before bursting into sobs. Hermione had absolutely no idea what to say. This was not how she had pictured this moment, to say the least.

This time, it was Harry who managed to collect himself first. “Everybody shut up.” Hermione wouldn’t have expected that to actually work, but apparently, it was the kind of moment in which people liked to hear a commanding voice. “Mrs. Granger, would you please tell the police that you aren’t being held hostage just at the moment? Only what you’re doing right now is the kind of thing that police tend to overreact to.”

“Granger—oh my god.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, it’s… yes, I’m all right, I’m fine, we’re fine, everything is fine here. It’s just—my daughter—and her… her friends, I suppose, and we weren’t expecting—oh my god.” Hermione’s father was staring blankly at her, and her mother was still swallowing sobs. “No, it’s all right, there’s no need to send an officer out, we’re all right now. No, really—I don’t need to stay on the line, but thank you, ma’am. Yes, of course, we’d appreciate that.” She set the phone down slowly, carefully, and with precision. “They’re going to send an officer around to make sure that we’re okay.” The calm in her voice was exaggerated now. “Hermione Jean Granger, you explain yourself _right now_.”

Hermione spent a long time explaining, and apologizing, and trying not to cry. Her parents were furious, which she had expected, and terrified, which she had not. She had expected anger, expected to need to convince them that she had acted for the best. She hadn’t expected to need to reassure them that no, the memories they had now really, truly were the real ones, and she really was their daughter. They were the Grangers who had been made to think they were the Wilkinses, not the Wilkinses now being made to think they were the Grangers. Ron made tea in an attempt to smooth things over. Harry went into the kitchen to help him and stayed there. Hermione didn’t blame him at all. If she could have hidden in the kitchen and avoided this entire conversation, she would have done.

Ultimately, her parents decided they needed time to think, and made it politely clear that they would like Hermione and her wizard friends to please leave now. Hermione tried not to be hurt by the dismissal. Did she have a telephone number? No, of course not, why should she have anything so normal as a telephone. Well, they had a telephone number, and here it was, and she could phone them in two days and they would discuss this more. And just like that, they’d been shoved out the door, back into the street.

“Well, that could have gone a lot worse,” Harry observed, as they were walking again. “They didn’t even throw anything at you.”

Hermione couldn’t even muster the energy to snap at him.


	4. Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the other shoe has yet to drop.

At least they could apparate back to the hotel room, and so they made it back before Hermione dissolved into tears. Ron had been watching for it, caught her in his arms and held her while she sobbed. That hadn’t been how any of them had really imagined the reunion with her parents. Ron had privately expected _some_ sort of disaster—he understood why she’d done what she did, but he didn’t think her parents would, with them not having been in the war. Still, he hadn’t expected it to be this bad, hadn’t expected them to be actively afraid of her.

Harry stood awkwardly in the corner while she cried, obviously wanting to say something, obviously not knowing what. Once Hermione had calmed down a little, was sitting cuddled halfway into Ron’s lap on the bed with her head on his shoulder, he finally burst out with, “Listen, let me go find us some takeaway or something,” and disappeared into the night. Honestly, it was a good idea. He and Ron hadn’t had anything since breakfast, a solid six hours plus an indeterminate period of timelessness ago now, and judging by the stack of empty granola bar wrappers on the desk, Hermione hadn’t eaten particularly well while Ron was gone, either. It was a good idea, and also, it got Harry away from Hermione’s tears, which was good for him. Harry hated to see Hermione cry.

Ron didn’t mind Hermione’s tears. Well, obviously he _minded_ , he hated that she was so upset, but one of the amazing things about Hermione was that she could cry, and then when she was done, she would feel better and be able to think clearly. And, honestly, being able to hold her and make her feel better made _him_ feel better about this whole mess, too.

Sure enough, by the time Harry came back with an enormous prawn curry, Hermione had dried her eyes, squared her shoulders, and gone to update her to-do lists. “So I think it’s going to be okay,” she said, having tidied a space on the desk for her paper plate. “They were just very surprised.”

Harry pushed prawn around his plate for a moment, not looking at her. Finally, “You know, if it’s not, it’s their loss, right?” He looked up then, his expression absolutely earnest. “No matter what. You’ve got me and Ron.”

Well, that got another sniff out of Hermione, and she set her fork down to go and hug him. Which, Ron reminded himself, he was not even slightly jealous about. Harry and Hermione had both been completely clear with him about their feelings for each other, and it wasn’t like _he_ didn’t hug Harry. ( _Bad example_ , suggested the part of his brain that thought Harry was adorable when he slept.) Harry patted her shoulder awkwardly and pulled away from her as quickly as he could, with an apologetic glance at Ron.

 

They ate, and Hermione peeled off her shoes and put dittany on her blisters, and Harry fell asleep curled up in the comfortable chair. It really was nice having both of them here, especially when Hermione changed into that soft flannel nightgown that really shouldn’t have clung to her curves so well and curled up in bed with him. Ron had always worried about Harry when he was out of sight, and lately, he’d worried about Hermione, too. It was a lot easier to sleep with both of them in the room. As he drifted off to sleep, it started to snow outside the window.

Ron went to sleep last, but he woke up last, too. Hermione had six books out and was poring over her spell design notes, apparently trying to figure out how she’d stopped time. Based on the way she was humming tunelessly, it was going well. Harry was sitting sideways in the chair, legs draped over one arm, reading the book Hermione had given him. Based on the way he was spinning the strings of his mokeskin pouch around his fingers, it was extremely dull.

Hermione was concentrating, but Harry looked up when Ron stretched, put the book down. “Morning. Got you breakfast.” He nodded at the bedside table, the only flat surface in the room that Hermione’s research wasn’t occupying, where there was a bun and a paper cup of tea under a warming charm. Harry’s coat, by the door, was soaked. Snow was drifting steadily down outside the window. “Apparently we’re reading this morning.”

It wasn’t the worst idea. Once he was washed and shaved and dressed, Ron dug through Hermione’s bag and found A History of Magic, thinking it might be a good idea if he found out exactly what had happened in the seventeenth century that led to the enactment of the Statute of Secrecy. Ron had never actually read any part of A History of Magic before, and it quickly became clear why. Even sprawled on a hastily-made bed in a hotel room with nothing else to do, with a specific question he wanted to answer, he absolutely could not make himself focus on that book enough to remember what a sentence was about by the time he got to the end. How was it possible to write a book this boring? He had once thought history was just this boring, but now he’d been there for some of it, and he knew better. It was like the opposite of the thing Harry kept saying about heroics sounding cooler than they really were, after the fact. When Harry talked about the things they’d done, they always sounded cooler than they’d actually been. When—who wrote this, Bathilda Bagshot?—talked about them, they sounded so boring that Ron was pretty sure in the History of Magic version, he would have fallen asleep halfway through robbing Gringotts.

Harry’s reading, Ron noticed, was not going well, either. He was spinning the pouch faster, and had started muttering under his breath. After a while he got loud enough that Ron could make out what he was muttering, just “Bullshit,” over and over, at a variety of pitches and volumes. Which was fine and all, until Ron noticed that the room had gotten significantly colder, and the corners of the pages of Harry’s book had begun to curl and blacken. “Bullshit bullshit BULLshit bullshit bull-shit—”

“HARRY!” Ron interrupted him—rather too late, he thought, as the book burst into surprisingly greasy flames. Harry yelped and dropped it, Hermione yelped and dropped her book as well, and Ron scrambled his wand out and, conscious of Hermione’s warning, at least tried a normal extinguishing charm (to no response) before putting it out with a _finite arcanum_.

There was a moment’s profound silence, which Hermione broke by saying, “Well,” which was about all there was to say.

“I’ll replace that book,” Harry offered Hermione, looking sheepish. “If you want.”

“Well, it was kind of rubbish,” Hermione admitted.

Abruptly, “Let’s go out,” Harry announced. “I need some air.”

Ron set his book aside with profound relief and looked to Hermione, who gazed speculatively out the window for a moment before agreeing.

Outside, there was a dusting of snow on the ground. Ron wouldn’t have thought much of that—wasn’t it meant to be winter here?—but it seemed to startle Hermione badly. “It never snows here,” she explained, to his questioning look.

They went out for a walk around Adelaide’s quite small wizarding district, Hermione tangling her fingers with Ron’s in a way that brought a wide smile to his face.

There was, in fact, a bookshop, but it disappointed both Harry and Hermione with its selection on magical theory. It took Harry rather less time to give up on it and to join Ron in a general poke around, which resulted in a copy of _Which Broomstick_ , a couple of pulpy novels that Harry denied having been looking at but did not put back on the shelf, a back-issue of _Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle_ (on which Ron was sadly behind) that Harry had lifted out of Ron’s hands and added to the pile, and when Hermione gave up and rejoined them, the 1998 edition of _Achievements in Charming_.

By the time they left the bookshop, most of the district was trying to close in the face of all of half an inch of snow, so they took the books and a couple of sandwiches back to the hotel room, where they tried to go back to reading. Harry seemed marginally more satisfied with _Which Broomstick_ , which Ron took as permission to give up on _A History of Magic_ in favor of _Martin Miggs_ , who appeared to have gotten himself into trouble with a Used Car Dealer in one of the issues that Ron had missed. Hermione, meanwhile, was quietly absorbing _Achievements in Charming_ with evident fascination, an intent look on her face that Ron found himself more interested in watching than in reading yet another iteration of the Used Car Dealer trope.

Then Hermione sat straight up, looked intently at the corner of the ceiling over the top of her book, and shouted, “Grothendieck!” Ron had his wand half-out before he realized she wasn’t looking at anything in particular, that something she was reading was what had surprised her. He exchanged a sheepish look with Harry, who also had his wand in his hand and had very nearly fallen out of his chair. Hermione wasn’t looking at either of them, had instead jumped up to rummage through the pile of books on her desk, coming up with what Ron vaguely recognized as the NEWT charms textbook, which she paged through furiously.

It quickly became clear that Hermione wasn’t about to elaborate. Ron wondered whether this was one of the times it would be best to just wait her out, or if this called for asking, so it was Harry who asked, “Hermione, is this something you should tell us more about _before_ you look up the details?”

“Grothendieck’s principle,” she said, flipping through pages, “ought to make it impossible for a charm to stop time. I forgot what it was called.”

Harry met Ron’s eyes with a grin and a shrug. “That’s all we get until she’s done, you think?”

“Probably.” Ron shrugged in return. He considered going back to _A History of Magic_ , which was still impenetrable. He wondered if he could just ask Hermione; she probably _knew_. That would mean explaining why he was asking, because Hermione was unlikely to believe he just had a sudden academic interest in historical trivia. He considered, also, going back to _Martin Miggs_ , but he was quite sure that the storyline he was reading now was a gritty reboot of one he’d read in one of Bill’s old issues from the ‘70s. He glanced at Harry, who was flipping pages in a desultory way. “Exploding snap?”

“Not while Hermione’s studying, she’ll murder us,” Harry answered. “Want to completely embarrass me at chess?”

Ron couldn’t actually argue with that assessment of either Hermione’s likely mood or Harry’s chess skills. He went to the bag to dig out the chess sets. Harry was still using the chess men he’d gotten out of a Christmas cracker first year, and they’d grown quietly fond of him, even though they rarely got to win. Harry did beat Hermione, occasionally, and had once won a game against a half-asleep Percy whom Ron had physically dragged away from his obsessive NEWT studying. He was more fun to play against than Hermione, anyway, because he was less likely to quit after the second loss, and at least tried to take in some of the strategy tips Ron sometimes gave him. His main weakness was being incredibly easy to draw into an all-out attack, which was also more fun to play against than Hermione’s chronic indecision.

Harry’s heart wasn’t really in it today, which was okay, Ron’s wasn’t really, either. It was something to do while they waited for Hermione to resurface, which was itself something to do while waiting out the two days Hermione’s parents had asked them for. And even that felt like something to do while waiting for the other shoe to drop, either with Harry’s problem or with whatever Ron’s dad was getting out of his runes. But chess _did_ help to pass the time, so that was good. Even if Ron’s queen’s bishop did keep giving him dirty looks every time he lost a piece he shouldn’t have.

Finally, as the sky outside was shading toward evening and Harry’s king was making his third Heroic Last Stand of the day, Hermione looked up from her charms book and snapped, “Well, that’s useless.”

Ron welcomed this new distraction: Harry was starting to look like losing at chess wasn’t fun any more. “What did it say?”

“Oh, it’s just some divination-y nonsense.” Hermione picked up the book for reference, flipped back several pages. “Let’s see… ‘the wizard’s fate is linked to the linear flow of time and creates destructive interference unless strict precautions are taken’… et cetera et cetera… something like three pages here about how time turners get around this issue which were _extremely_ interesting but hardly relevant to the question at hand… anyway, the gist is that stopping time is essentially the least efficient method of achieving any charm effect and if you try to do it you’ll get your effect some other way or it’ll just fizzle. Or if you try too hard your head just pops, but that’s every charm effect, of course.” She scowled at the book. “There must be some exceptions that they couldn’t be bothered to explain in an intermediate level textbook. Once we’re back home I’ll see if I can’t get access to a proper library. I wonder what the real reason is?”

“What, because the ‘fate’ thing is clearly bunk?” Harry asked. Ron wasn’t sure if he was amused or annoyed—he didn’t think _Harry_ was sure, for that matter.

“Oh, well, that was different,” Hermione huffed, exasperated. “I don’t see why it ought to enter into little things. Certainly not enough to prevent one from stopping time for an hour or two.”

“Well, according to the book it is, isn’t it?” Ron countered. “That’s the theory, anyway.”

“And yet it quite evidently wasn’t. Hence, it’s not a good explanation, and it’s clearly dumbed down for students, and I’d have thought we were past that at NEWT!”

“Or they’re really special circumstances that _really_ aren’t going to apply to most people?” He thought about how his dad had been surprised that Hermione knew about drinking from the fire hose. “Did you just push really hard?”

“It wasn’t hard at all, actually. Certainly not ‘head just pops’ difficult. And anyway, I’m _sure_ there were more efficient ways to accomplish the parameters I set out for the charm, if stopping time is really all that inefficient.”

“Okay, well,” considering now about how the spell’s magic had felt sliding off him without finding any real purchase, “maybe that rule just doesn’t apply to _you_?”

“It’s a physical property of the universe, Ronald, I can’t just get a note from a teacher exempting me.”

“No, I’m just saying—I mean it didn’t work on _me_ , so maybe—”

“That’s another thing. Why _didn’t_ it work on you? It couldn’t be _just_ you, could it?”

Ron shrugged. “It just didn’t stick. It _could_ be just me, you know.” He really didn’t want to go into the whole explanation as to why, it still sounded too much like bragging. “Is that important to why you could do it in the first place, though?”

“It _might_ be! I would _know_ if the Charms book didn’t insist on being _stupid_!”

A loud, shattering crash behind him, a sharp sense of _something wrong_ stabbing down his spine, and Harry saying “Fuck!” as the room went dark. It wasn’t the cold, cloying, curdled darkness from Grimmauld Place, yet, but it wasn’t just the darkness of the lamp being out, either, never mind it wasn’t yet dark outside. Hermione’s shaky, “ _Lumos_?” served to water it down more than to illuminate it.

It wasn’t getting any less creepy, all things considered, but Ron was by this point an expert on getting used to things, and he was starting to get used to this. “ _Finite Arcanum._ ” There was faint twilight filtering in through the window, but most of the light in the room was coming from Hermione’s wand; all three of the lamps that had been on the walls had shattered, glass scattered on the floor.

Hermione, it appeared, was _not_ getting used to this; she had gone a little gray in the face, was trembling. And Harry was on his feet, back pressed to the door, eyes screwed shut, fists and jaw clenched. “Harry? What happened?”

He shook his head. “Can you two go _ten minutes_ without starting on each other?” His voice was tight, strained. Ron was definitely the only one getting used to this; he mentally kicked himself for being complacent.

Except… starting on each other? “What are you _talking_ about, Harry?” Hermione asked it first, but it wasn’t as if Ron wasn’t thinking it.

“Never mind.” He turned around, leaned his forehead on the door frame. “It’s _fine_.”

Oh. _Oh._ “Harry, we were just talking.” He went over, put a careful hand on Harry’s shoulder, took it away again when Harry shrugged it off. “We’re just talking,” he repeated, trying not to let himself get too absorbed in guilt. Because of _course_ that was going to upset Harry, when he was already on edge. He didn’t want to say it, but it came out before he could stop it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

There was a long, tense silence, which Hermione broke with a loud sigh. “Well, all right,” she said, crisp and practical. “That is clearly _not_ an anger management problem. Was it just _our_ lamps, do you think?”

“Yes.” Harry was emphatic. He shook himself all over, threw himself into the chair, looked toward the wall. “I think I’m…getting better. It wanted to get bigger, but I wouldn’t let it. That’s better. It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?” Hermione had her hands on her hips, looked ready to press, but Ron shook his head at her, and she relented. “I don’t suppose you’d like to help clean this up?” she asked, instead.

“No magic, for just a minute, okay?” Harry was still talking to the wall.

Which was fair enough. It was a matter of a quick _reparo_ to fix the lamps themselves, though it took a few tries and a glance through Hermione’s Charms book to figure out what they needed to cast to re-light them. By the time they’d finished, Harry appeared to have calmed himself down, at least enough to turn back to face the room.

 

That was how the next two days went, essentially. Hermione kept worrying at the time question in a way that suggested very strongly that she didn’t want to think about their personal lives just at the moment. Ron didn’t blame her much for that: her parents were enough of a worry without having to deal with Harry’s problem, never mind what was waiting for them at home. Harry, meanwhile, was putting on a brave face, but had also continued to sleep in the hotel room’s chair, despite Hermione’s suggestion that there probably other rooms available. All he’d said was that he was all right in the chair, but Ron suspected he didn’t want to be alone.

Finally it was time to phone Hermione’s parents. As they walked through the still-crunchy snow toward the muggle part of the city and a phone box, Hermione laced her fingers through Ron’s, stood close to him. “You know, you needn’t have come out with me,” she observed, the tightness of her grip suggesting she was pleased he had. “It’s just a telephone call.”

“And miss a chance to watch a fellyphone in action?” Ron teased. He _had_ learned the thing’s proper name—he’d picked up a lot about muggle things, listening to Harry and Hermione talk over the years—but she always seemed amused when he got them wrong. Plus, it was a good gauge on her mood. Just at the moment, she was too anxious to correct him. He returned the tightness of her grip, putting as much reassurance as he could into the press of his palm.

She did insist on going into the phone box alone, however. Ron waited outside with Harry, who had been quiet during the walk, looking worried. “Will she be okay?” he asked, giving Ron a pleading look for a moment before turning it to his shoes. “I mean, if they… if they blow up on her? She’ll be okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Ron reassured him, hoping it was true. He honestly couldn’t imagine how he would feel, in Hermione’s shoes. It wasn’t as if his parents had never been angry with him, but they’d never just wanted him to _go away_ like that. He hoped she was right, that they would feel better with some time to think things over.

Harry’s nod was more acknowledgment than agreement, and that had just about exhausted his capacity for talking about what was worrying him. They stood together, kicking at the snow, waiting.

But Hermione was all smiles when she burst out of the phone box, threw her arms around both of them, pulled Ron down to kiss him fast but hard on the mouth. Harry was taking a minute to catch up, but Ron smiled back at her by reflex. “It’s good?”

“They want to go out to dinner tomorrow and talk!” She let them go, grabbed both their hands, and started back toward the hotel. “Which means, yes, absolutely, everything is going to be perfectly all right, all I really need is a chance to explain. Apparently they’re thinking they’d like to stay here, as they’ve moved and started to establish a practice and all? But that’s all right, it’s not that difficult to come and visit, it isn’t as though we have to deal with airplanes or anything.”

She kept talking all the way back to their room, about the logistics of her parents staying in Australia, her plans for what to tell them, her general relief that they were willing to sit down and talk to her. She seemed so happy that Ron didn’t have the heart to ask more specific questions about what they’d said, he didn’t want to put a damper on her mood. It had been much too long since he’d seen Hermione genuinely happy, if he was being honest with himself. He’d missed it, and seeing it now, his heart lifted a little despite his own reservations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay, and for the chapter where Nothing Much Happens. More plot next chapter.


End file.
